This is clearly a sharp contrasts and complete opposite to the plight of ethnic Macedonians in Greece, Bulgaria, and Albania, whose minimal human rights are not respected at all, not to mention of having TV and Radio and ministers in the governments of these countries.

The fate of Kosovo remains uncertain owing to the reluctance of the Albanian majority to contemplate a restoration of Serbian sovereignty and of the United Nations and NATO to separate the territory definitively from Serbia in contravention of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 from 1999.

It borders Montenegro in the northwest, Kosovo in the north, the Republic of Macedonia in the east, and Greece in the south; it has a coast on the Adriatic Sea in the west, and a coast on the Ionian Sea in the southwest.

Many ethnic Albanians also live in the bordering countries of Serbia (around 2,000,000; of that, around 1,800,000 in Kosovo), Montenegro (around 50,000), and the Republic of Macedonia (around 700,000) although a lot of Albanians believe that the number might be higher.

The dominant language is Albanian, although Greek is also spoken by the Greek minority in the southern regions of the country.

Albanians live concentrated in the northwestern part of the country, in a region that borders Albania and Kosovo, two areas inhabited by other Albanians.

The Albanians in Macedonia feel they are excluded and that their rights are not respected; measures aimed at the protection of their cultural and religious tradition exist but are at times poorly applied.

However, the Albanians are underrepresented in the state apparatus, in the military and the police.

Three Albanian men, all in their early 20's, are getting ready to sleep al fresco in the terrace of a trendy bar-restaurant in the coastal area of Porto Rafti.

Albanians worked in construction and in all sorts of odd jobs, Poles harvested oranges or olives in the Peloponnese, and the Greek lower middle class satisfied its craving for upward mobility by employing Russians or Bulgarians as house help.

The coverage of the arrest and subsequent suicide of a pedophile in the Peloponnese and of the sexual abuses and murders committed by a gang of youths engaged in "satanic" rituals in an Athens suburb in 1993-94 proved milestones in the downgrading of Greek media.

The Albanian population in the Balkans, which is defined as a language group and includes Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims, is scattered throughout the region, with the largest concentrations existing in Albania proper; Macedonia; Kosovo; the areas of Presevo, Bujanovac, and Medvedja in southern Serbia near the border with Kosovo; and Montenegro.

Albanians are even more concerned by the fact that many of the police officers and Ministry of the Interior troops involved in policing the demilitarized zone are the same individuals who patrolled the area under Milosevic, and in some circumstances committed crimes against the Albanian population.

The Albanian government deserves to be applauded for the responsible positions it has taken on the recent violence, and Albania should continue to encourage ethnic Albanians in the Balkans not to use force as a means of resolving their grievances.

Accepting Islam in Albanian regions was a less painful process, because the Albanians did not have an autocephalous Church, and their Christianity, whether Byzantine or Latin, had not become as integral in Albanian life and remained either Greek or Italian.

The Monastery of Pec, which was the seat of the Serbian patriarch (1346-1556 and 1557-1766), maintained close and friendly relations with the Albanians of the rugged area of Rugovo, which provided shelter to Patriarch Arsenius IV in 1737, when he had to hide from the pursuing Turks.

Albanians are survivors, too, but in most cases they assured their continuity in an easier way.

The Albanians are the second largest population group in Macedonia (40% of the population), after the Slavs-Macedonians (50% of the population).

Although the Albanians compose around 40% of the whole population in Macedonia, the Macedonian government asserts that Albanians are only one of the minority populations in Macedonia and cannot, therefore, make claims of equality as a people.

Albanians have suffered from forced moving, they are not allowed their own school and cultural activities or weapons which is allowed for Slavic-Macedonians.

Albanian Boghumils were persecuted very fiercely from the official Church, and in many cases had to share the same fate as the Albignesi and Cathari heretics had to face in the Western Europe.

In 1945 the AlbanianMuslims of Çamëria in Northern Greece were ethnically cleansed and exiled in Albania and Turkey, and had their homes and mosques destroyed or confiscated, since the government of Papandreou accused its Çami Albanian population of collaborating with the Nazis.

AlbanianMuslims at the same way as their non-religious Albanians, do suffer from the huge economic misery, which the country is experiencing at present.

That the Albanian land was occupied is witnessed by a memorandum in 1920 of a Serbian general, where he said, The Albanians live in a compact mass from the Adriatic Sea to the old Turkish-Serbian border, and very rarely inhabited by Serbian population...

The Yugoslav-Turkish Convention on the expatriation of the Albanians to Anatolia is one of the original documents that presents permanent genocide exerted on the Albanian population in general., Although this document was not ratified and implemented in the way it was planned, it had hard consequences for the future of the Albanian population.

The expatriation and assimilation of the Albanians and colonisation of the land of ethnic Albanians by the Serbian hegemonist regime was considered as a Serbian national sacred mission.

Some believe the Albanians to be descendants of the Illyrians while others give them origins that date back to 1043 when they were first mentioned in the Balkans.

Among the poorest of the Continent's nationalities, in the latter half of the 20th centuryAlbanians experienced the highest rate of natural population growth of any of Europe's major indigenous ethnic groups, increasing their numbers from 1.5 million around 1900 and fewer than 2.5 million in 1950.

August of 2003 was marked by renewed terrorist attacks by the ANA (Albanian National Army) both against Serb border guards and Serb civilians.

Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia and in Kosovo shared the same state for seven decades until Yugoslavia broke up in 1991 -- they shared the same religion, the same language, and many of the same traditions.

In Tirana, the Albanian capital, the mood is sympathetic but less intense, as the country has been less affected by the recent crisis.

Most Albanians are aware of the huge importance the international community plays in their situation.

Far from a splintering of the Albanian movement, Shatri argues, "there is no historical precedent for the present level of the homogenization of the Albanian people." The prospects remain primarily dependent on steps taken by Belgrade and responses made by the major powers.

Albanian communities, with their high walls and joined family houses, physically represent the extremely close familial ties that are the core of Albanian life.

The Albanian desire to break free from Serbia is not an aspiration born in the context of Yugoslavia's breakdown.

Albin Kurti, Kosova Albanian student leader was sentenced to serve a 15 year jail term in 2000.

This site is dedicated to Albanian Students in Kosova and their fight for a basic right, the right of education in their own language.

Even though Albanian Language University and High Schools in the region existed for decades, the Serbian regime closed down all of them, forcing the Albanian Students and Professors to hold their classes outside their school premises since 1991.

7 According to those maps, the Albanian land is called the square surface that extends from north on the line from Novi-Pazar to Ni, in the east from Leskovac to Kumanova, Shkup and Veles, in the west from Novi-Pazar to Gucia and the extreme north-western coast of the Lake of Shkodra.

The relatively fast defeat of the Ottoman military should be sought in the war on many fronts that was imposed to it, in weak armament of the military, the hatred of the indigenous population towards the regime, as well as in the wheedling and hypocritical attitude of the Serbian circles to this population.

In the Vilayet of Shkodra, the Albanians comprised 98.2%; in the Vilayet of Janina 59.1%; in the Vilayet of Manastir 54.1% and the Vilayet of Kosova, without the Sanjac of Shkup, 79.1% of the population.

MacedoniaAlbanians are concentrated in the western part of Macedonia, struggling for better lives within the existing borders.

The map is intended to show that MacedoniaAlbanians have been living in those areas for many generations, contrary to some beliefs that MacedoniaAlbanians have come in Macedonia from Albania or Kosova.

MacedoniaAlbanian political factors have emphasized the integrity of the Macedonian territory and borders.

The Albanian criminal enterprises, operating largely in New York and other Eastern seaboard cities, represent a major challenge to federal agents because of their propensity for violence and brutality, the officials said.

When the FBI dealt a major blow to the LCN families in recent years, the Albanians began to emerge, and now are taking over turf once controlled by the traditional mob bosses.

Officials said ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro are included in the clans and crews that emerged in the organized crime world.

The call by Ibrahim Rugova came amid a report of secret peace talks, and after France warned that military intervention may be the only way to halt the fighting in Kosovo if U.S. diplomacy fails to produce a cease-fire and peace talks soon.

Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency reported Friday that secessionist Albanians opened fire on a Serb police patrol some 30 kilometers (20 miles) northwest of Pristina, in the town of Vucitrn.

Both ethnic Albanian and Serb sources reported fighting Thursday between government forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, despite Serb success in driving the secessionist rebels from most of their strongholds this month.

All loyal Albanians were to leave during the bombing and go to Albania or Macedonia to show the world how terrible the Serbs were; this exodus was staged; it was a performance, Hollywood in Kosovo.

Between the attacks from the KLA on Albanians who cooperated with the Yugoslav government and the continuous bombing by NATO, especially of Albanians who disobeyed the KLA, the KLA had gotten their message across to the clan leaders.

It was psychological warfare, intended to reinforce the psychological crisis among Albanians, a crisis rooted in fear.

We believe that slavery in Albany reached its peak in 1790 when 572 slaves were counted as residents - placing at least one African ancestry person in almost a third of the city's 573 households.

The provincial census of 1697 identified 23 Negroes in all of immense Albany County.

Because the project accepts new information on the people of colonial Albany on a daily basis, the 16,000 biographical profiles in our community data base continue to evolve as the more we learn, the more we might understand, and the more we can hope to know.